Mobile apps have a distinctive problem. Most are currently standalone programs that often just converse with an app server run by the company that wrote the app. The apps do not have URL links within them. In general, an app from one company does not interact with an app from another company.
Separately, it is much harder for a search engine, which is optimised to search the Web for webpages, to search arbitrary apps. There is no standard syntax equivalent to an URL or URI to enable this.
To enable such and other functionality in mobile apps has been termed ‘deep linking’ within apps. (The term also has an earlier use that refers to standard web pages and URL links within them. This submission does not use that earlier meaning.)
Major companies have several projects aimed at defining deep links. FACEBOOK Corp. has APP LINKS. GOOGLE Corp. has APP INDEXING and GOOGLE INTENTS. TWITTER Corp. has APP CARDS. APPLE Corp. has APPLE EXTENSIONS. YAHOO Corp. has 2 US patents. There are also several startups, like BIT.LY, BRANCH METRICS Corp., BUTTON Corp., DEEPLINK Corp., FUKUROU Corp., HAPTIK Corp., HOKO Corp., LINKFIRE Corp., QUIXY Corp., TAPSTREAM Corp., URX Corp., WILDCARD Corp., and YOZIO Corp., each with its own initiative. The syntax and functionality vary between these company specific efforts.
We recommend that if the reader is new to the idea of deep links to read 2 articles. “Apps everywhere but no unifying link” by C. Dougherty, NEW YORK TIMES, 5 Jan. 2015. And “Deep linking's big untapped potential” by M. Thomson, VENTUREBEAT.com, 9 Aug. 2015. Both at least at this time of writing are available online. They are well written. The first article is accessible to the general reader. The second article has slightly more technical details. They give an understanding of deep links and the business potential, as understood publicly in the prior art of 2015.